What’s the most efficient way to program a robot in a competition?

一支来自应用科学大学Würzburg-Schweinfurt的学生团队使用了Robodk。他们在2021年的第一个机器人大挑战赛中获得了获胜位置。

在国际机器人竞赛中，您需要快速有效地对机器人进行编程。

There’s no time for you to mess around with complex code files or arcane manufacturer-specific programming languages. Spending as much of your valuable time developing the functionality of the robot will earn you points in the competition.

In the first-ever Robothon Grand Challenge, the winning team of students made sure they spent all their time on the core functionality of their robot by using RoboDK for programming.

他们是这样做的！

The Robothon Grand Challenge 2021

The Robothon Grand Challenge was held during Automatica Sprint 2021, an offshoot ofAutomatica,世界领先的机器人贸易展览会。

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the event was held virtually in June to provide a digital platform for the robotics industry to get together and provide support to the community.

The机器人大挑战赛是机器人操纵中的国际竞争。目的是使用机器人技术来解决经济和环境面临的紧迫问题。

今年，竞争的具体目的是找到智能解决方案，以提高电子废物的回收率。

挑战：电子废物的拆卸

竞争参赛者需要完成集成任务。实际上，他们必须创建一个可以拆卸电子产品进行回收的机器人。

作为竞争组织者解释说:

“电子废物继续积累，因此，进入垃圾填埋场的珍贵和有毒物质的数量也是如此；除非正确拆卸和分类。这项工作是重复性，肮脏且危险的，这使其成为自动化和机器人技术的绝佳用例。

“With our challenge, we want to offer young talents and academics the chance to actively participate and shape the future of robotics in science & industry.”

获胜团队解释说，目前，只有20％的全球电子废物被回收。考虑到这一点，预测表明，到2050年，电子废物的数量将增加到1.2亿吨。此外，电子废物不仅是一个环境问题，而且具有巨大的财务价值估计为625亿美元。

However, there is currently no completely automated solution to recycling e-waste on the market.

由于电子废物的非结构化性质，它需要高级传感器和算法才能检测，识别和定位电子废物组件。此外，它还需要细粒度的操作来分离不同类型的电子废物组件。

How Robots Can Reduce E-Waste

The concept behind this year’s challenge is that robots can be a good solution to dismantle e-waste and sort it for further processing.

In brief, the challenge included 5 levels, which each team had to complete using the official competition task board:

1. 按钮按 -The teams first had to program their robot to press a button on the task board. The more times the robot pressed the button in the allotted time, the more points they earned. This means the task prioritized efficient movement.
2. 钉在孔端口插入中 -一个典型的操作任务。钉孔是一个演示nstration of the robot’s ability to insert parts during assembly. In this case, it involved removing and reinserting a plug into a socket.
3. 钥匙孔的关键 -The robot then had to pick up a key, insert it into a keyhole, and turn it.
4. Battery removal —团队必须对机器人进行编程以删除电池盒的盖子。然后，他们必须将电池提取在里面。对于机器人来说，这是一项非常复杂的任务，因为它涉及几种出色的运动技能。
5. Battery recycling —最后，机器人必须拿起电池并将其插入一个孔中。这触发了按钮按下。同样，更多按钮将获得更多积分。

Introducing… the RoboPig Team

获胜团队来自应用科学大学Würzburg-Schweinfurt。

该团队由Elhasan Mohamed和Desmond Fomelack（学习机电一体化），Felix Pagels（技术数学）和MartinLöser（实验室员工和研究生工程师）组成。该团队由机器人和数字生产教授Tobias Kaupp博士建立和监督。

队长埃尔哈桑·穆罕默德（Elhasan Mohamed）解释了使用Robodk参加该项目的感觉：

“As a robotics student, I enjoyed working and developing with RoboDK. It allows me to use its built-in tools, and at the same time, to build something on the ground level that fits what I need exactly.

“我绝对会推荐给刚开始学习机器人技术的人，也向以专业方式处理工业机器人的机器人工程师推荐它”

团队的机器人设置

The team’s robot setup incorporated a few different hardware and software elements to complete the task.

他们解决方案的核心组成部分是：

• 通用机器人UR5E协作机器人与集成力传感器
• Robotiq Hand-e精确抓手
• An Intel RealSense depth camera
• 3D打印的自定义下颚处理零件
• OPENCV计算机视觉库
• Python编程语言
• Robodk

By using these off-the-shelf components, the team got their robot up and running quickly and efficiently without “reinventing the wheel”.

Indeed, this efficient hardware integration allowed them to have more time and energy on creating a robot program.

Why the Team Used RoboDK

团队的编程设置围绕着我们的Robodk离线编程软件。

他们有四个主要的原因选择Robodk而不是：

1. 它使他们能够快速获得基本机器人操纵器编程的技能。
2. TheRobodk APIenabled the integration of robotics and machine vision, which they needed for their solution.
3. The RoboDK toolset is easy to use and they avoided investing time in using multiple other solutions.
4. Robodk的可视化功能使他们能够快速有效地开发解决方案。

Overall, the choice of using RoboDK made sure that their integration tasks would be as efficient as possible. Instead of fiddling around with too much complex low-level robotics code, the tool allowed them to focus all their core development effort on integrating the more advanced parts of their program.

这也许是Robopig团队是10个竞赛参赛者中仅有的4个以完成所有竞赛任务水平的原因。

他们的机器人程序

The team’s robot program completed the task with the following steps:

1. 视觉传感器使用2D图像处理将任务板大致地定位在工作空间中。
2. The robot’s force feedback was used to perform fine localization of the board.
3. 随着董事会的位置，机器人按下了1级任务的按钮，然后从板上拿起钥匙。
4. 使用力反馈机器人将钥匙插入级别2任务中。
5. Force feedback was also used to extract the connector in Level 3 and insert it into a new socket.
6. 然后，机器人卸下了4级电池组的盖子，并跑步一系列预编程运动以提取电池。
7. 然后，机器人使用螺旋搜索方法将电池插入任务板的最后一部分，用于5级。

Robodk的模拟为他们提供了这些步骤快速，敏捷的开发和调试环境。用于机器人运动和图像处理。此外，它还使他们可以轻松为任务板设置固定的坐标系。最后，他们成功地在程序运行时成功设置了机器人的实时可视化。

该视频显示了获胜的机器人部署：